re: Serious question about Lincoln and the Civil War, no flame.(Posted by Tom288 on 11/21/12 at 11:42 am to Powerman)

quote:At the end of the day the emancipation proclamation was issued by the executive branch of the government. That might give you a clue as to how Lincoln felt on the issue. Do you think that he would have drug the country into war if it weren't something as serious as slavery?

Lincoln's own words might also give you a clue as to how he felt on the issue.

quote:The IMMEDIATE and ACTUAL cause of the war was the North invading and not allowing the South to legally secede.

quote:In case people forget...again...SLAVERY as an actual institution was ending anyway.

The most critical flaw with your reasoning is that most people in 1860 did not believe slavery was on its way out. In fact, they thought it was booming.

They saw slavery as profitable and prosperous, with a bright future. White southerners wanted to expand it into places where they knew cotton agriculture would not be dominant. However, there were mining and construction opportunities, and many white southerners cast covetous eyes upon the Caribbean as a place where America’s manifest destiny would expand the slaveholders’ paradise.

Slavery had proven prosperous in the 1850s. The plantation economy had thrived while the rest of the nation suffered during the Panic of 1857. The peculiar institution had also received renewed political protection. The Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 gave the federal government new ways of enforcing the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution, while advocates of slavery’s expansion rejoiced when the Supreme Court removed restrictions to the expansion of slavery into the territories with the Dred Scott decision of 1857.

re: Serious question about Lincoln and the Civil War, no flame.(Posted by Baloo on 11/21/12 at 11:51 am to theunknownknight)

quote:Freed Blacks were around 8 times more likely to own slaves than whites.

Of all of the made up statistics on the internet, this is perhaps the most ridiculous. While Louisiana is a lot different than the rest of the south in that there was an existing black aristocracy who owned slaves, the idea that "freed blacks" were likely to own slaves is absurd given that they were in abject property and had no land.

And why did you put "white supremacy" in quotes. People proudly believed in the supremacy of the white race in 1860. Hell, Lincoln was a white supremacist as well.

re: Serious question about Lincoln and the Civil War, no flame.(Posted by Wolfhound45 on 11/21/12 at 12:00 pm to GumboPot)

Whether you agree or not, the Southern states did view this as the second Revolutionary War. You only have to look to the wording of the Declaration of Independence to understand why...

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Lots of parallels to Southern sentiments of the time, even though that the "political bands" were being dissolved due to the issue of slavery.

re: Serious question about Lincoln and the Civil War, no flame.(Posted by Baloo on 11/21/12 at 12:24 pm to doubleb)

Not just one of them. That understates it. It is PRIMARILY the right of slavery. Here's what South Carolina said in the declaration to secede:

quote:We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

On the 4th day of March next, this party will take possession of the Government. It has announced that the South shall be excluded from the common territory, that the judicial tribunals shall be made sectional, and that a war must be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States. (bolding is mine)

The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy.

Sectional interest and animosity will deepen the irritation, and all hope of remedy is rendered vain, by the fact that public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanction of more erroneous religious belief.

We, therefore, the People of South Carolina, by our delegates in Convention assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, have solemnly declared that the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America, is dissolved, and that the State of South Carolina has resumed her position among the nations of the world, as a separate and independent State; with full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent States may of right do.

They even self-identify as "the slave-holding states". These states clearly believed the institution of slavery to be central to their cause. It's why they kept harping on it.

re: Serious question about Lincoln and the Civil War, no flame.(Posted by theunknownknight on 11/21/12 at 12:42 pm to Baloo)

quote:They even self-identify as "the slave-holding states". These states clearly believed the institution of slavery to be central to their cause. It's why they kept harping on it.

The ISSUE was the constitution as written and interpreted at the time was being ignored by the Federal Government run by the Northern States, thus destroying the Southern economy. I love how "slavery" is mentioned a few times and the "constitution" is referred to numerous times...yet the Civil War was not based on a constitutional disagreement? Read your own quote.

Again, how does a peaceful and LEGAL (regardless of how some viewed it, it was legal) secession = war?

quote:The ISSUE was the constitution as written and interpreted at the time was being ignored by the Federal Government run by the Northern States, thus destroying the Southern economy. I love how "slavery" is mentioned a few times and the "constitution" is referred to numerous times...yet the Civil War was not based on a constitutional disagreement? Read your own quote.

Really?

quote:A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union

In the momentous step, which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

re: Serious question about Lincoln and the Civil War, no flame.(Posted by Baloo on 11/21/12 at 12:56 pm to theunknownknight)

quote:I love how "slavery" is mentioned a few times and the "constitution" is referred to numerous times...yet the Civil War was not based on a constitutional disagreement? Read your own quote.

I really don't want to play counting games, but "constitution" and its variants appears 5 times in the quote, and "slave" and its variants appear 8 times.

and let's look at the references to constitution...

"and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution" -- about slavery

"For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the *forms* [emphasis in the original] of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself" -- about an anti-slavery party winning the presidency

"This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens" -- about slavery and rights for black people

"The guaranties of the Constitution will then no longer exist; the equal rights of the States will be lost. The slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government, or self-protection, and the Federal Government will have become their enemy." -- about being a slave-holding state

They weren't hiding the ball. They were openly fighting for slavery. They were proud of it. there's no need to pretend they weren't.